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Wednesday, 4 June 2014

Writing 101: (Questionable) Tips From The Girl With Words

Lately quite a few people have been asking
me for writing tips. This is kind of amazing because it means people think I
have something of value to offer. I’m not so sure I do, but hey, I’ll do my
best! At the very least, this will motivate me
to write more than I have been the last three days. I had a really great
week last week, and then this week…Nadda. Zip zilch nothing of value. The curse
of the creative life.

These ‘tips’ are just based on my own
experiences. I’m not an expert, and I’m yet to have anything published*.
Proceed with caution…

A question I seem to be asked a lot these
days is ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ I like this question because it makes me
imagine an idea factory in my head where I can go and browse the shelves until
I see one that I like. It would probably be easier if it worked that way, but
the reality is I don’t actually know where I get my ideas from. I am constantly
telling myself stories in my head. I’ve done that for as long as I can
remember. Most of them are clichéd and not something that I would try to write
down, but my brain is always searching for something to latch onto and turn
into a story. For example: As some of you may know, I have two jobs. During the
day I teach primary school children (aged 5-12), and at night I (sometimes)
work with my mother. She owns a cleaning company, and together we clean the
local cinema (I know, super glamorous. But hey, this is how I pay for a zillion
trips to Mars so I’m not complaining!) One night last week when I was vacuuming
the entrance, I saw a guy sitting at a table and doing what looked to be
math problems in a small notebook. He didn’t speak to anyone or look at anyone,
and was just generally behaving oddly. Plus it was like eleven o’clock at night
or something, so it was weird that he was there at all. Who hangs out at a
cinema (at night!) and doesn’t watch a movie?? In reality I think he was probably
waiting to pick someone up, but in my head, the situation played out like this:

What
if he is a ghost? What if I’m the only one who can see him? Oh my gosh, maybe I’ll
go over there and vacuum near him and accidentally bump into him and say sorry,
and he’ll be like “oh my God you can see me??” and I’ll be like “of course I
can…” and he’ll be like “I’ve been sitting here for three days trying to make
people see me but no one can. I thought I was losing my mind.” And then I’ll be
like, “Sure, whatever,” and start to walk away and he’ll try to grab my arm to
make me stay and his hand will go straight through me and…

This continued for the remainder of the
night (about 3 hours) so by the time I came home, I had an entire story planned
out, right down to why he would be visiting the cinema as a ghost, what the
math problems were for and how “I” was going to help him [I also had a
whole cast of characters]. As soon I got home I wrote down a general outline of
the story in one of my many, many notebooks so that I could come back and turn
it into a proper story later. I haven’t yet, and maybe I never will, but the
idea is there. Maybe I’ll take one small element of that idea and turn into
something completely new, or add it into something I’m already working on. The
point is, I find that inspiration is everywhere, if you are open to it. I’ve been inspired by things that my kids at school tell me, or by some of the
crazy games they play. I've been inspired by books I've read, movies I've watched or songs I've listened to. Honestly, finding ideas is the easy part. It’s the execution
that can be difficult.

I’ve said this before, but when it comes to
improving your writing, the best thing you can do is just write. Actually put
pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write something. It doesn’t matter if
it’s awful. It doesn’t matter if you spell every second word wrong or commit
atrocious grammatical crimes. All you need to focus on is getting a story down
on paper – a story that delivers a beginning, middle and an end. That is
actually harder than it sounds. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve
written myself into a corner and couldn’t find a way to finish a story. That
doesn’t matter, though. When that happens you learn from your mistakes and
either backtrack to change things so you can reach a satisfying conclusion, or
dust yourself off and start a new story. Not everything you write has to be publishable.
I have a ton of posts saved on my computer that I originally wrote with the
intention of putting on my blog, but then changed my mind because they weren’t
good enough. There’s a gap, you know, between what you want to achieve and what
you’re capable of achieving. The only way to close that gap is to work. Work
and write and don’t give up. Push through the hard times and the times where
you feel like you can’t write a single sentence worth a damn. Like anything
worth pursuing, getting to where you want to be will take time, patience and
effort. There are no shortcuts. The only way to get better at writing is to
write. Write often and write anything. Don’t worry about making it pretty and
presentable (yet). Sometimes amazing things can happen when you shove your
inner Cubbins** into a cage. For example: Last week I had this story in my head
that I wanted to write, but I was avoiding doing it because I knew it wasn’t
something that I’d want to share with the world. It was a story just for me, so
it seemed like a waste of time. I tried to ignore the ‘craving’ for a few days
(the best way to describe it), but after sitting blankly in front of my laptop
for a few days, I said ‘screw this’, and just started writing. Because I knew
that I wasn’t ever going to show anyone what I had written, I was able to turn
off my inner editor and just let the words come. I wasn’t hung up on sentence
structure and cadence and the placement of commas; I just wrote…And finished a
23k novella in three days. Let’s just take a moment to read that again: twenty
three thousand words in three days. Now if I wanted to publish that on my blog
or anywhere else, I’d have to edit the bejebus out of it to make it fit for
public consumption. I know that, but that’s hardly the point, is it? The point
is I wrote it. There’s a certain kind of magic in starting a story and finishing
it, and if that experience taught me anything it’s this: Writing for the love
of writing is never a waste of time, and I am capable of far more than I ever
imagined. And so are you. Just show up and write, and amazing things will
happen.

Another thing that seems to keep coming
when people talk about writing is the difficulty in finding the right place to
start. This can be tricky, but my advice would be to write the part that
interests you. Start there. Start with the initial scene that gave you the
idea. BLAME actually began life as a cool dream I had based on an elaborate and
reoccurring fantasy I had when I was a kid (I can’t tell you too much as it
will give the story away :p). I woke up and immediately wrote down that scene,
and I’m still waiting to incorporate it into the story. Maybe it won’t even be
used, but that won’t matter because it did its job. It inspired me to write. So
find the scene, the moment, the character, the situation or the line that
inspires you to write and start there. You
can always go back and fill in any missing details later. Or you may find that
the scene which you thought belonged in the middle of the story is actually the
perfect beginning. You won’t know until you start writing, so…Are you beginning
to see a theme yet??

The final thing I want to talk about are
the days where everything feels too hard. Where you can’t even form a coherent
sentence and you feel like you completely suck at everything and you should just
move to the mountains and die alone. We all have those days. I’m sure even
wildly talented writers have those days where they question every word they
type. As a certain someone*** says, some days you feel so strong, and other days
you’re like, ‘What the f#%k am I doing??’ That’s normal, and honestly, I’d rather
have days of crippling self-doubt that push me to try harder and do better instead
of believing I’m awesome and churning out rubbish (though let’s be honest –
that happens anyway). On days (weeks, months) like that, I believe we should
take a breath and remember why we’re fighting for our dreams in the first
place. Seek out the things that inspire you and let them restore you and give
you a new reason to push forward. That’s easy for me because I know exactly what (or who) is going to do that for me. If you don’t have a go-to person, place
or thing to inspire you when things feel too hard, I encourage you to find what
works for you and stick by it. Hold onto it with both hands, because you’re going
to need it. Pursuing a creative life and chasing your dreams is not easy, but
we only get one life. We only get one shot. You don't want to waste that by wishing you had tried. Every person you admire started out
like you once. Dreaming. Beginning. Learning. Fighting for it. They got where
they are by working. If they can do it, so can you. So can I. We can do this.
We can. I believe that with all of my heart.